YNOT at the Movies

More than five decades have passed since the heartbreaking romantic drama "Love Story" (1970) told the story of a straight couple where one of them dies from an illness; and now, here comes a similar story for a gay couple. The director Michael Showalter adapts the TV columnist Michael Ausiello's memoir, "Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies," into a sentimental drama "Spoiler Alert" (USA 2022 | 112 min.). Despite the fact that it tells a true story and it tries hard to build up your emotions, this film lacks the magic of "Love Story", nor does it have the technical caliber of a Korean tearjerker. You end up feeling sorry for the protagonist who died, the spoiler in the film's title, but you probably also feel detached from the surviving husband's grief.

The film opens with the image of the photographer Kit Cowan (Ben Aldridge) dying of cancer in a hospital in 2015. His husband Michael Ausiello (Jim Parsons) is the narrator and begins to tell their love story starting with how they met fourteen years ago, in a gay bar.

Living in New York City, self-conscious Michael is a columnist for the magazine TV Guide. After he meets Kit, they start to date and eventually move in together as a couple. Along the way, Kit comes out to his loving and supportive mom (Sally Field) and dad (Bill Irwin), and Michael is included as part of the family. One Christmas after another, they enjoy each other for several years.

Then the typical problems in relationships, regardless of gay or straight, come in play. Michael and Kit begin to attend couple's therapy. Under the advice of their therapist, they begin to live separately to give each other some space. Just when their relationship heads south, Kit is diagnosed with cancer, and that changes everybody's perspective. Michael comes back to Kit's side to support him in the fight with cancer until the very end. Before Kit dies, they even get married.

For some reason, Kit's death seems to be the most important fact the film wants to stick into your head. Not only is it in the film's title, sort of, but also it is in the opening scene, despite the rest of the story in flashback being told in chronological order. If the intention is to provoke the viewers' sympathy, it doesn't work very well. You might feel sorry for Kit's misfortune, however, it's hard to feel how profound Kit's death is to Michael. That's because the film doesn't go deep enough in portraying the love between the two.

In fact, before they moved back together due to Kit's illness, they were often fighting and on the edge of breaking up. The film is ambiguous about the real reason for them to get back together and get married. Is it because of sympathy or because of love? During the first several years when they were deeply in love, the film chose to fast-forward by flashing a few Christmas cards. Without the investment in depicting their love, it's hard for the viewers to resonate with Michael's grief.

There are quite a few moments during the first half of the film that realistically show the déjà vu in gay relationships, they are much more convincing snapshots than those scenes supposedly showing the love between Kit and Michael.

What's in the film is a love story, but you might wish it were told as affectingly as in "Love Story."

"Spoiler Alert" opens in the San Francisco Bay Area on Friday, December 2, 2022.